The ball was a crowded one; but was, perhaps, the most brilliant and select of that season, combining a Christmas-eve festivity with the début party of the acknowledged beauty and prize-heiress of the entire set.
Blanche Allmand had been finally finishing abroad for some years, after having won her blue-ribboned diploma from Mde. de Cancanière, on Murray Hill. Rumors of her perfections of face and form and character had come across the seas, in those thousand-and-one letters, for which a fostering government makes postal unions. And ever mingled with these rumors, came praises of those thousand-and-one accomplishments, which society is equally apt to admire as to envy, even while it does not appreciate.
But what most inspired with noble ambition the gilded youth of that particular coterie, was the universally accepted fact that old Jack Allmand was master of the warmest fortune that any papa 175 thereabouts might add to the blessing he bestowed upon his son-in-law.
And, like Jeptha of old, he “had one fair daughter and no more.” A widower—not only “warm,” but very safe—he had weathered all the shoals and quicksands of “the street,” and had brought his golden argosy safe into the port of investment. Then he had retired from business, which theretofore had engrossed his whole heart and soul, and lavished both upon the fair young girl, to bring whom from final finishing at the Sacre Cœur, he had just made himself so hideously sea-sick.
It was very late in the season when the delayed return of the pair was announced, with numerous adjectives, in the society columns; but Mr. Allmand’s impatience to expose his golden fleece to the expectant Jasons would brook no delay. Blanche was allowed scarcely time to unpack her many trunks; to exhibit her goodly share of the chefs d’œuvres of Pengat and Worth to the admiring elect; and to receive gushing embraces, only measured by their envy, when the début ball was announced for Christmas-eve.
His best Christmas gift had come to the doting father; and what more fitting season to show his joy and pride in it, and to have their little world share both?
When Blanche, backed by Miss Rose Wood, had hinted that it was rather an unusual occasion, he had promptly settled that by declaring that she was a peculiarly unusual sort of girl. So the invitations went forth; the Allmand mansion was first turned inside out, and then illuminated, and flower-hidden for the début ball.
That it would be the affair of the season none doubted. Already, many a paternal pocket had twinged responsive to extra appeals from marketable daughters; and as to beaux, they had responded nem. con., when bidden to the event promising so much in present feast, and which might possibly so tend to prevent future famine. For already the clubs had discounted the chances of one favorite or another for winning the marital prize of the year.
Foremost among those who had hastened to welcome Blanche back to her new home was Miss Rose Wood. She had the mysterious knack of “coming out” gracefully with every fresh set; of perfectly adapting herself to its fads, and especially to its beaux. Set might come and set might go, but she came out forever; and some nameless tact implied to every débutante, what Micawber forced upon Copperfield with the brutality of words, that she was the “friend of her youth.”